Former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor did not mince words as he lambasted the Supreme Court for effectively neutering any attempt to stop President Donald Trump from building his White House ballroom.
The ruling, which lifted lower-court blocks on construction as litigation continues, was closely divided, with Chief Justice John Roberts joiningthe liberals in a dissent against the rest of the conservative majority. The ruling technically doesn’t declare Trump’s actions legal, but all but ensures the ballroom will be built before any definitive ruling that it’s illegal can be made.
“It’s extraordinary that the top judge in America assessed that a crime was in progress, but his colleagues looked the other way so as not to anger the criminal,” wrote Taylor. It’s all the more remarkable, he said, because Roberts is “among the most institutionally cautious men in Washington, a chief justice who’s spent two decades avoiding confrontation, sometimes painfully so.”
By way of analogy for the ruling, wrote Taylor, “imagine a man kicking down the door of a clubhouse that belongs to the whole neighborhood. Six cops arrive. The sergeant takes one look and says, ‘That’s illegal! Stop that man!’ The other five look down at their feet and mumble about how the person who called 911 didn’t own the building or live in the neighborhood. So they turn back to their cars, holster their flashlights, and drive off. The break-in continues.” This, he wrote, is essentially what the majority did.
The conservatives, Taylor continued, “strained themselves to say they weren’t making a judgment about whether the construction was legal, but everyone else can see this is a cop-out.” They could have simply allowed the block to stand and “let the case proceed on the merits in the lower courts, where, as the National Trust noted, every judge who reviewed the project had found it ‘patently unlawful,’” he pointed out.
The most absurd part, he said, is that the Supreme Court is “opening the door to fresh abuses of power on federal property all across America” and inventing “a brand new category of presidential lawbreaking” in the process.
“Who’s to say Trump won’t next seek to behead the statue at the Lincoln Memorial and put his stone head atop it? Or carve his face into Mount Rushmore?” wrote Taylor. “Or give away chunks of our national parks to real estate developers? Oh wait, he’s already doing that, surely buoyed by the belief that the high court won’t stop him.”
Ultimately, he concluded, “we’re going to make sure [the justices] remember” their cowardice when Trump leaves office in a few years — and “I’ll be the first to invite them to a ceremony on the White House lawn where, one day, Trump’s illegal ballroom will eventually be demolished.”
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